The Hiranandani Group is back in the fray for the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) project along with its consortium partner, Zurich Airport.

The last date for submission of bids is November 7. The three other companies in the fray so far are GVK, GMR Group and Tata Realty along with Vinci Concessions. (Reuters)

The Hiranandani Group is back in the fray for the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) project along with its consortium partner, Zurich Airport.

The group had earlier been disqualified from bidding for the project owing to concerns over the company’s security clearances, but Hiranandani subsequently submitted a bid for building the Goa airport two months ago. After the bid was accepted at Goa, Hiranandani moved court, saying it should be allowed to bid for other airports as well. Later, the government agencies allowed Hiranandani to participate in the bid for the Navi Mumbai project.

The last date for submission of bids is November 7. The three other companies in the fray so far are GVK, GMR Group and Tata Realty along with Vinci Concessions.

The bids will be submitted to City Industrial and Development Corporation (CIDCO) and vetted along with the project monitoring and implementation committee (PMIC). The PMIC is headed by the state chief secretary and comprises representatives from the Union civil aviation ministry. The entire process is expected to take at least two months from the last date of submission, given the various stages of scrutiny and approvals required.

Meanwhile, the pre-development work for the airport has just started. For this, the airport area has been divided into four zones. While zone three and zone four are being developed by Gayatri Projects and GVK respectively, CIDCO has put up zones one and two for re-tendering. This process is expected to be over in about one-and-a-half month’s time.

River Ulwe cuts through zones one and two and will need to be diverted before work can begin there. In zones three and four, there is a hillock 92 metre high and which needs to be cut to a minimum of at least 8 metre.

The process of land acquisition is going on with about 75% of the land required for the core airport area — 1,160 hectares — already complete. The acquisition for the remaining 25%, or about 292 hectares, is still underway.

Meanwhile, CIDCO is expecting an approval from the state government for the first phase of its integrated development plan (IDP-I) for the Navi Mumbai Airport Influence Notified Area (NAINA) in about a month’s time from now.

The area earmarked for NAINA covers an area of 670 square kilometre, much more than the 500 square kilometre that the entire city of Mumbai is spread over. IDP-I proposes to develop an area of just about 30 square kilometre, covering 36 villages.

CIDCO has proposed the land pooling model for acquiring the land needed for NAINA under which villagers will continue to remain owners of 60% of their land. Out of the remaining 40%, CIDCO will use 25% of the land for developing physical infrastructure and social and cultural amenities while 15% will be leased to developers. This will help CIDCO garner finance for developing the proposed infrastructure.